


5 Times Jack Was Painfully Canadian (+1 time he y'all'd)

by wannabe_someone



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, M/M, and dedicated to my parents constant arguments with ppl over invigilate or proctor, based off of random crap i know, quebecois swears are weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27481690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wannabe_someone/pseuds/wannabe_someone
Summary: Jack smiled. “I think all Chads would have problems writing this exam.”He stared at Jack, mouth hanging open. “Jackabelle. What the fuck did you just say?”Jack is painfully canadian and he confuses all of his teammates. that's it. that's the fic
Relationships: Adam "Holster" Birkholtz & Justin "Ransom" Oluransi, Alexei "Tater" Mashkov & Kent "Parse" Parson, Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Larissa "Lardo" Duan/Shitty Knight
Comments: 12
Kudos: 176





	5 Times Jack Was Painfully Canadian (+1 time he y'all'd)

**Author's Note:**

> unbetad and probably a mess- i have been working on this forever
> 
> also i love y'all and this fandom ur why i keep writing this fic

1

Shitty was walking to the Haus from Gregory when he heard the terrible phrase for the first time. He’d just linked arms with Jack, craving his immense amount of body heat. Shitty hadn’t looked at the weather before going to class and he wasn’t about to admit any form of weakness.

“So. Brah.”

Jack turned his head. “Euh, what?” Then he glared at Shitty. “Get off of my arm, Shits.”

Shitty didn’t let go. “How was the test for Gregg’s class, my bro? I’ve heard that they’re insane.”

“Shits-” Jack raised an eyebrow, wrestling his arm away from Shitty. “Are you asking me to… “

The other person laughed. “My mom would murder me. Literally, bro. I would be found years later in a dumpster.”

Jack looked legitimately surprised. “What?”

Shitty shrugged. “Part of having academics for parents. We’ve always got to be smarter than the students.” 

Jack looked shocked. “That seems like a lot of pressure.”

Shitty stroked his nonexistent mustache, thinking. “Well, mostly the Chads. Fuck Chads.”

Jack smiled. “I think all Chads would have problems writing this exam.”

He stared at Jack, mouth hanging open. “Jackabelle. What the fuck did you just say?”

Jack’s shoulders started to creep up as he blushed. “To write an exam?”

“But… Greggs is the person writing the exam?”

The two people stared at each other, equally confused. A second later, Jack started walking, forcing Shitty to jog to catch up.

They didn’t talk again until they got to the Haus, Shitty instantly sprawling on the green couch, not caring that it was infested with the remnants of a million Kegsters. Only Johnson was there, and he left almost immediately, leaving them completely alone.

At one point Shitty looked up from a textbook, remembering what he’d wanted to tell Jack. “Oh yeah! Right!” He snapped his fingers. “Oh Jackabelle!”

Jack took out a single earbud, still reading. “What.”

“Remember how I’ve got to be better than the Chads? So one time, my mom was proctoring an exam and-”

“Don’t you mean that she was invigilating the exam?”

Shitty closed his eyes. “What the fuck?”

Jack stared back at him, looking both confused and concerned. “We write an exam and the TA’s invigilate?”

“No, the professor writes the exam?”

The two men stared at each other, neither one wanting to break the silence.

Shitty didn’t realize what had happened until Ransom joined the team, prompting a series of chirps about how fucking weird Canada is.

Ransom responded in true Canadian fashion by pointing out the hot mess that is America.

The topic was never brought up again.

2

The first time someone gets freaked out by Jack saying sorry is when he bumps into one of the Chads on the way to class, knocking him into a pile of leaves. 

“What the fuck, bro!” As soon as he recognizes Jack, he sneers. “I should’ve known it was one of you hockey dickwads.”

Jack started to rub the back of his neck, feeling uncomfortable. “Euh. Sorry.”

Chad scoffed. “Yeah. Whatever.”

Lardo flipped him the finger as he walked away, then stared up at Jack. “What did you say to him?”

“All I did was apologize.” Jack was used to people being surprised by him; he had played in Juniors, then missed the draft and reappeared at a tiny D1 school. He also happened to be the sole history major in a team dominated by business majors.

He had thought that the attention would get easier to bear, but so far, it hadn’t. At least around the hockey team he was more likely to get chirped for secretly being an old man. 

Lardo’s face twisted up as she tried to mimic his accent. “How did you say it? Sorree?”

Jack reached up to fiddle with the strap of the bag he was carrying. Lardo grabbed his arm, realizing how uncomfortable she’d made him.

“Dude. It was a joke.” She smiled. “But I’m pretty sure the team’s going to chirp you to Canada and back for this.”

Lardo kept true to her word, starting to talk to Johnson about it the minute they got back to the Haus. Jack was only half listening, absorbed in his own work.

His head snapped around the minute Ransom and Holster walked into the Haus, Holster loudly collapsing onto the green couch, Ransom taking off his backpack before sitting in front of him.

“Dudes. You know what I heard Jack say today?”

Holster started to bounce up and down, utterly excited by the prospect of deets.

“He fucking said sorree. Like, who says that?”

Ransom just stared at her blankly. “Doesn’t everyone say it like that?”

Holster patted his bro on the back, eager to show off his expertise. 

“It’s a Canadian thing.” He shrugged, unsurprised. “Bro, why are you so surprised?”

“I’m from fucking Boston.” Lardo glared at him. “What, do you think I spent half of my life in Canada?”

Holster returned the glare, trying to regain his supremacy as the King of Chirping. He threw his hands in the air, gesticulating wildly.

“I’m from fucking Buffalo! It’s not that weird to go to Canada every weekend!”

From the counter, Jack smiled, putting an earbud in. He was glad that his teammates were bonding, but he had work to finish. It was time to drown them out with some classic rock.

3

Jack wasn’t looking to get woken up at 3 in the morning by the sounds of baking, but he’d quickly realized that it was part of the deal when living with Bitty. He actually didn’t mind it- it gave him an easy way of checking up on his boyfriend and whenever he had a cheat day his favorite pie was always there.

However, when he woke up to Bitty swearing? That meant something was truly going wrong.

He wandered into the kitchen and immediately realized the problem: Bitty was trying to follow a recipe written in French. Bitty was a man of many talents, but learning another language was none of them. Forget gays who can’t do math: Bitty was a gay who couldn’t learn French.

Fortunately for Jack, it made hiding the expensives thing he was buying easy. Jack couldn’t wait to see his face when he presented Bitty with several pans from Le Creuset.

Jack yawned as he walked up to Bitty, seeing the baking supplies strewn all over the counter. He gently placed his hand on Bitty’s shoulder.

“What’s wrong, Bits?”

Bitty didn’t take his eyes off of what he was making. “Oh, Jack! Thank goodness you’re here, sweetpea.”

Bitty was so tired that he had boundless energy, starting to talk about the day he had and everything that was going on. 

“So you see, I’m trying to make something traditional, just to impress your parents. I think it’s called tarte au sucre? But the best recipe I found was in French, and I could understand that, but now I’m having to preheat the oven, and-”

Bitty stared up at Jack, face smeared with flour, presumably from pushing his hair out of his face as he baked. 

Jack smiled. He’d spent long enough both in the US and Canada to be able to convert from Farenheight to Celcius easily. 

“What does the recipe say?”

Bitty kept stirring the filling even though it was already mixed, staring at the recipe on his phone. “It says to preheat it to 210 degrees.”

Jack walked over to the oven, turning it up to 410 degrees and starting it. “It’s done.”

He glanced back over at Bitty, bathed in the light of his phone as he wrote a tweet. “You do realize you could’ve looked it up, bud?”

Bitty turned around. “What?”

Jack smiled. “Nevermind.”

He sat back down at the island, content to spend his night watching Bitty bake.

4

Jack had very quickly realized that when Lardo and Tater were together, the results were… always interesting.

He didn’t mean it as a bad thing - they were two of his best friends - but Jack was sure that he would end up bailing them both out of jail at some point. He took a quick drink from his red solo cup, letting his eyes drift over to where Lardo was painting Tater’s toenails.

(She’d already done Shitty’s, using the glitteriest glitter she could find on his middle fingers. He’d made her promise to do them in pinkest pink if he ever got a chance to meet Anish Kapoor.)

Bitty was staring at Lardo, looking at the large pile of colors in front of her. Jack would bet that his nails would be peach by the end of the night. Or possibly baby blue.

Lardo was saying something to Tater, and he moved to sit next to them. Lardo looked up from what she was doing, holding a miniscule brush in her hand as she painted a number on Tater’s toe.

“Hey bro.”

Jack smiled, staring at her work, then back up at Tater. “Aces colors, Tater?”

Tater shrugged. “Lost a bet to rat. Now I have to paint my nails his colors.”

Lardo frowned at Tater’s feet again, her brush hovering inches away from his toe. “I managed to talk Parse out of the logo. It took fucking forever.”

Tater stared at her expectantly. “The story?”

“Oh.” Lardo glanced at Jack before starting again. “So yeah, I was at a kegster, like normal, and this douchebro came up to me, started saying all of this stupid shit. S’not like it was weird, I heard it from everyone, starting in like first grade.”

Tater stared at her. “First grade?”

Jack cleared his throat. “Grade one,” he reminded Tater, under his breath.

His eyes lit up. “Oh, right.”

Lardo put the brush back, grabbing a small clear bottle and shaking it. “So I challenged him to beer pong. And the rest is history.”

Tater started looking wildly around the room as a small, satisfied smile crept across Jack’s face. “I ended up threatening them with a fire extinguisher.”

“Ch’yeah.” Lardo smiled at Jack. “Not going to chirp you for the grade one thing- this time.” 

Jack flinched as she shook a bottle of red polish in his face. “Samwell colors.”

“Euh.”

“You don’t have to.”

He looked over at Bitty, still leaning against the wall. “Sure. For him.”

“Dude. When you get married, I’m totally taking your wedding photos.”

Jack blushed, then shook a finger at her. “Not until after graduation, remember.”

Lardo bent down over his feet. “Can’t wait until I can chirp you endlessly about this.”

He snorted. “Only three months.”

“Sure, Jan.”

5

George was staring right across her desk as Jack walked in, not even realizing that he’d walked in.

“Euh. You wanted to see me?”

She just motioned at him to sit down, too tired to bother with courtesy. “Snowy’s out for the next few months. At least.”

“Crisse.” He hung his head in his hands. “What happened?”

George was blunt, as always. “He has a new kid. Born early. He told management that he didn’t want to be away from his family.”

Jack got up and started walking around the office, muttering under his breath in French. George knew some french, but even after a career playing and managing a hockey team, she still had a tendency to take Quebecois swears at face value. 

She didn’t realize she’d said anything out loud until she saw that Jack was staring at her. “You expected me to swear more.”

A smile crept across George’s face. “I can swear in Russian, but not in French. I’m honestly surprised you use those, since you’re Jewish.”

He smiled back. “It’s cultural.”

They stared at the walls until Jack cleared his throat. “So, a call up?”

“Yes.”

“All right.” He stood up. “I’ll tell the team.”

+1

Jack always found talking about the lists of fines to be annoying, but as captain, it was his duty. And he was starting to like some of the rookies.

He grabbed the list off of the wall, a few of the rules added in beautiful, swooping handwriting. “Euh. Listen up, y’all-”

The three rookies in front of him stared at each other. Across the locker room, Jack saw money change hands as he flushed.

“First y’all of the season, huh Cap?”

By now Jack knew the only appropriate answer. He always mimicked Bitty’s accent, knowing it was the only way to get the horde to shut up. “Fuck y’all!”

The locker room exploded into laughter immediately, and Jack smiled, knowing he’d escaped further chirping. For now.


End file.
